Emily Wilson

speaker

468 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 1 Aug

Emily Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · ‘Odyssey’ translator Emily Wilson: Nolan should've hired a screenwriter · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

It wasn't that I wanted to... I thought, you know, Homer hasn't got enough girl cooties on it.

Let me get rid of that.

Which I think sometimes the online discourse seems to be some version of that.

Or some version also of, I mean, it can be, let's celebrate her for being a girl.

Which I think either one of those is actually a little bit misleading about my actual work.

I think it's very limiting in terms of women's work and also in terms of feminism.

If you think anything a woman does is inherently feminist.

I also think it's misleading about the fact that, of course, there are many, many female classicists, many female Homerists.

There were also many female translators of Homer into other languages.

There was one by a French woman called Anne Dacier from centuries ago into French prose.

So I think it's this blinkered idea both about gender and about the idea that the English-speaking world is the only thing that exists.

I mean, I certainly don't approach the task of translation with the assumption that all female characters will be presented as ridiculous.

But I don't think that's actually...

feminism.

I think feminism actually needs to be a bit more than that if there's going to be a feminist intervention.

I do approach the task of translating Homer with the idea that these poems are really good, and they're really good at characterizing all of the characters, including female characters, including enslaved characters, that we really do get these richly realized, distinct points of view.

But again, that's not actually about feminism.

I love that you listened to the audiobook.

So the audiobook of my Odyssey is done by Claire Danes and the audiobook of my Iliad is done by Audra MacDonald.

I think they both did amazing jobs.

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